Praising Caesar Not Burying Him: What We Know about Employment Relations in Small Firms

Abstract

ike the central character, frozen in time, in the first ‘Austin Powers’ film, Barrett and Rainnie (2002) see little development in the field of small firm industrial relations since their earlier work (Rainnie, 1989). Hence we are asked to believe that extant research has yet to tackle the ‘small is beautiful’ stereotype, has accorded insufficient attention to structural forces, and has neglected employee responses to the structurally-generated uncertainties that beset working lives in small firms. The re-presentation of Rainnie’s (1989) typology is offered by Barrett and Rainnie (hereafter B and R) as an attempt to awaken researchers to the merits of their ‘integrated approach to small firm industrial relations’. In this response, we argue that B and R overstate their contribution, while underplaying that of more recent research to the field. Their cause is not assisted by an often incomplete reading of previous studies. A response to B and R is important for one key reason. As in many other areas of the sociology of work and organizations, a picture is presented of theoretical disarray. Yet, on the contrary, work on small firms in Britain is a key exemplar of analytical advance, as argued by Edwards (1995, 2001). One illustration is the extent to which sophisticated treatments of small firms are appearing in British textbooks (e.g. Blyton and Turnbull, 1998: 252–67; Dundon et al., 2001; Scase, 1995). By contrast, research in many other countries has said little about these firms. A search through ten years of leading US journals in the fields of sociology, work and employment, and industrial relations produced no significant examples of research papers on behaviour in small firms.1 British